Materials for cutting tool inserts fall into several well-known categories. These include high speed steels, cast alloys of cobalt and chromium, sintered carbides and ceramic materials. Each type of material has an advantage depending upon the application. Ceramic materials are used in especially difficult applications. They have high hardness, chemical inertness and wear resistance even at elevated temperatures. However, ceramic cutting tools are often deficient in toughness.
There has been a growing interest in the use of ceramic materials known in the art as sialons as materials for cutting tools. Sialons are compositions of silicon, aluminum, oxygen and nitrogen and sometimes other elements. Several sialon phases are recognized including alpha-prime-sialon and beta-prime-sialon. Cutting tools may be made from either alpha-prime-sialons, beta-prime-sialons or mixtures thereof. As with many ceramic compositions, sialons often comprise an intergranular phase. For a description of a beta-prime-sialon material, reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,127,416. For a complete description of mixed alpha-prime-sialon/beta-prime-sialon compositions useful for cutting tool inserts, reference is made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,563,433 and 4,547,470.
One advantage of sialon ceramic cutting tool inserts is increased toughness. For a ceramic material, sialons have exceptional toughness. Sialons have higher hot hardness and elevated temperature compressive strength than cemented carbides. This should allow sialons to resist thermal deformation and flank wear during machining better than cemented carbides. A disadvantage of sialon cutting tool inserts is that they have less than desired chemical resistance. Under the conditions of high speed steel roughing, both sialons and cemented carbides will quickly fail by crater wear due to the affinity between these materials and hot steel chips.
It has been suggested that sialon cutting tools be provided with a chemical and abrasion resistant coating applied by chemical vapor deposition. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,251, it was taught to provide sialon compositions with a coating of a carbide of Ti, Zr, or Hf, nitride thereof, carbo-nitride thereof, carbo-oxide thereof, and carbo-nitro-oxide thereof. It is further taught in this patent that an alumina coating may be placed over the above described coating, but no suggestion is made to place the alumina coating directly upon the sialon.
Applicants have attempted to place an alumina coating directly upon sialon compositions by chemical vapor deposition in order to significantly retard the chemical reaction with the hot steel chips. However, two problems were discovered that made the use of an alumina coating applied by chemical vapor deposition impractical. Devitrification of the intergranular glass phase occurred producing a B-phase (Y.sub.2 SiAlO.sub.5 N) which results in a substantially lower toughness of the substrate. Also, the intergranular phase near the surface escaped, leaving porosity behind in about a ten micron thick surface layer adjacent to the coatings. The degradation in the substrate properties resulted in a tendency for edge chipping and fracture during metal cutting, although flank water and crater wear resistances were better than coated cemented carbide tool inserts tested under the same conditions.
The problem of degradation during chemical vapor deposition is related at least in part to the temperature of the substrate during the process. The applicants have determined that simply heating sialon ceramic materials (either the beta-prime-sialon type or the alpha-prime-sialon/beta-prime-sialon type) to 1000 degrees Centigrade for the period of time it normally takes to deposit an alumina coating results in a drop in fracture toughness.
In seeking ways to restore the toughness of alumina coated sialon cutting inserts, applicants have discovered a surface alloyed sialon material that has the toughness of virgin sialon and substantially improved chemical and wear resistance.